"Mere Administrative Exercise Containing Self-Congratulatory Phrases": Congress MP Karti Chidambaram On Interim Budget

New Delhi [India] : Congress MP Karti Chidambaram on Thursday termed the 2024 interim budget a ‘mere administrative exercise’ that contained nothing except ‘obligatory self-congratulatory, self-praise phrases.’

‘It is a mere administrative exercise to ensure that the government of India has the requisite funds to carry on its normal business until the new parliament is constituted and a new government is formed,’ Karti Chidambaram told ANI after Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the last budget before the 2024 Lok Sabha election.

‘And that’s what they have done, except for making their obligatory self-congratulatory, self-praise phrases, nothing else is there and nothing should have been there, and rightly so. Nothing is there,’ he added.

The interim budget, tabled today, will take care of the financial needs of the intervening period until a government is formed after the Lok Sabha polls after which a full budget will be presented by the new government in July.

With this Budget Presentation, Sitharaman equalled the record set by former Prime Minister Morarji Desai, who as finance minister, presented five annual budgets and one interim budget between 1959 and 1964.

As expected and in relief for the citizens, the central government neither tweaked nor put any additional tax burden on citizens, in the interim Budget for 2024-25 tabled by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

‘Keeping with the convention, I do not propose to make any changes relating to taxation and propose to retain the same tax rates for direct taxes and indirect taxes including import duties,’ Sitharaman said in her Budget speech on Thursday.

However, certain tax benefits to start-ups and investments made by sovereign wealth or pension funds as well as tax exemption on certain income of some IFSC units are expiring in March 2024. To provide continuity in taxation, she proposed to extend the date by another year.

Moreover, in line with the government’s vision to improve ease of living and ease of doing business, she announced to improve tax-payer services.

‘There are a large number of petty, non-verified, non-reconciled or disputed direct tax demands, many of them dating as far back as the year 1962, which continue to remain on the books, causing anxiety to honest tax-payers and hindering refunds of subsequent years,’ she said.

Presenting the Union Budget 2023, Sitharaman on Thursday pegged the fiscal deficit target for 2024-25 at 5.1 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP).

In 2023-24, the government pegged the fiscal deficit target for 2023-24 at 5.9 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). Today, Sitharaman said that the fiscal deficit of 2023-24 was downwardly revised to 5.8 per cent.